The (small kine) Good, the Bad, and the Very Ugly
Update on Elections Related Bills in the 2024 Legislative Session
April 5th was the second decking deadline. To meet this deadline, bills must have been heard and passed out of their final committees in their non-originating chamber. Bills that didn’t make it this far are dead for the session.
ATVHI has been tracking 75 election related bills and a handful of public records bills this session.
Here is a recap of where the most prominent elections related bills stand:
ALL six ATVHI election integrity bills died after the first lateral deadline of February 16 as they were not assigned committee hearings. Each bill was assigned to two committees, and none were heard in even one committee. Sad!
A ton of hard work went into writing those bills and getting them sponsored. There’s always next year I suppose.
Mahalo nui to everyone who contacted the committee chair and representatives and asked for these bills to get hearings. Your dedication to the fight for secure and transparent elections is appreciated.
The rest of the election related bills are election corruption bills, meaning none of them would accomplish anything positive for election integrity, and in fact will push Hawai’i lower than our present 51/51 last place national ranking on the Heritage Foundation’s Election Integrity Scorecard.
Wait a second!! How can we get lower than 51/51?
We cannot lower our ranking, but we can lower our score. Hawai’i’s dead last place ranking is based on a point score out of 100. Our current score is 27/100, so, technically, we can drop all the way down to zero, which is where we are headed.
1. Bad Bills That Died Without Hearings, aka, “Bullets Dodged”
The Ranked Choice Voting bills:
SB401/HB1444-expands RCV to all elections
SB3223-legislative vacancies to be filled by RCV instead of gubernatorial appointment
We can breathe the biggest sigh of relief that these bills won’t be a concern for the rest of the session, but, trust me-RCV isn’t going away.
Primaries related bills:
The legislature REALLY wants to abolish our party run Presidential caucuses and replace them with state run universal mail in ballot counted-by-secret-software Presidential Primaries.
HB411-only the top two candidates by number of votes received advance to the General election regardless of party (would ANY Republican EVER be elected with this system?).
HB342-replaces party run caucuses with state run Presidential Primaries and allows party-switching to vote in the opposite party’s primary.
Lowering the voting age bills:
HB742-allows 16 year olds to vote
SB1560/SB1561-allows 17 year olds to vote in the Primary
Only so many bills can be squeezed into our short legislative session. We need to stay vigilant and watch for these to resurface next year.
2. Bills That Died after Hearings:
SB2702-Election fraud intimidation. This bill was deferred (a polite way of killing it) in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing after excellent testimonies were given by dedicated election integrity advocates. This proves that testimony CAN make a difference, and that oral testimony is really the only testimony that is effective when you’re opposing a bill. Killing this was a no brainer as it was obviously a leftist copy/paste bill that is circulating in several other states, and was never fine-tuned for Hawai’i before releasing it, so it violated multiple Hawai’i state statutes.
If we hadn’t testified it may have easily been passed into law. Vigilance is key. (Note: the companion bill SB1055 didn’t get a hearing).
SB2004 & HB1678-designates UH campuses as voter service centers and allows voter registration with a student ID.
These bills died after a UH representative testified that UH already provides ample resources for students to register to vote (this revelation is really worrisome, as roughly one-third of UH students are out of state and international students), doesn’t have the capacity to create voter service centers, and that the student IDs lack a signature.
Testimonies from organizations carry much more weight, and I’m grateful the UH representative took time to provide written and in person testimony.
SB2386-Establishes Presidential Primaries-deferred after oral testimonies given in opposition from representatives of both the Democratic and Republican parties.
I’m convinced it was the Dem testimonies that influenced the decision to defer-but it was refreshing to finally agree on something together. (Similar Primaries related bills didn’t get hearings).
SB2396-Deepfakes in Electioneering bill. Similar bills are still alive.
SB2334-requiring post-election audits to audit all races instead of 10% of precincts. I’m glad this one died. It was a sneaky bill; on the surface it sounds like a good idea to audit all races but the Office of Elections would have argued the impossibility of doing this without using ballot images. More on ballot images later.
3. Bills That Were Advancing but Missed the Second Lateral Filing or Second Decking Deadline:
HB1766-deepfake companion bill to SB2396
SB2392-the bill that Rhoads wrote to keep Trump off the ballot. This was a signaling flex by Rhoads and it gained a lot of attention. I was assured by one of Trump’s lawyers that SCOTUS would put an end to this silliness, and they did, but the 14th Amendment section of this bill overshadowed the egregious section that would have given absolute power to the Chief Elections Officer and county clerks to keep ANYONE THEY CHOSE from appearing on the ballot.
4. Which brings us to the Very Bad and Very Ugly: Election Corruption bills that made it to the home stretch:
SB2687-AI bill-prohibits a person from distributing materially deceptive media. The bill verbiage is specific to elections. AI is moving at the speed of light. If the Hawai’i legislature thinks they have the capability to monitor, regulate, and control AI they are delusional.
SB2240-the ERIC bill. We tried so very hard to fight this, but Hawai’i is on the path to join ERIC. Other states are fleeing from ERIC-not Hawai’i! The companion bill died due to a missed deadline, but one ERIC bill is all you need to further corrupt our voter rolls, illegally share personal private information, including that of minors, and register to vote tens of thousands of noncitizens.
SB2333-the supreme gaslighting bill that claims a ballot image is the same as the original paper ballot, and will be now legal to use for the audits (as opposed to the audits in previous elections when they were used-but illegally). The ATVHI tweet on this bill was picked up by large accounts on social media and made the X22 report (37:05 minute mark if you’re interested). Sadly, the X22 report does not cast a vote at the legislature.
As both SB2333 and SB2240 have already passed third reading, all that remains is for them to survive conference committee, then they will be forwarded to Governor Green to sign into law.
Is there a chance the bills won’t survive conference committee? Sure, but I’m not counting on it, as the amendments don’t seem to be substantiative or controversial. Both bills are Rhoads bills. Rhoads has one of the highest bill pass rate in the legislature.
To learn more about the conference committee process, the Public Access Room is hosting an online workshop Friday, April 12 at 11 am. You may register here.
We will be watching closely to see what happens to SB2333 and SB2240 in conference committee.
